Pick Your Stock-Market Boom: Big Oil vs. Big Tech

There are two great times to make money in stock markets: the postcrash rebound and the end-of-cycle excess. Oil and technology fit the pattern perfectly in the past two years. Since the oil-price low of January 2016, the global oil and tech sectors have both made more than 80%, including dividends, beating the wider market's 53% return hands down. The oil sector was merely rebounding as oil prices tripled from their lows, but tech stocks were being led to heady heights by giddy enthusiasm for a bright future. More extreme proxies for the commodity and tech cycles have done even better.